Japanese supplier Nippon Seiki and its affiliates have agreed to pay a $4.56 million civil settlement for price fixing its instrument panel clusters.

The development is part of an expansive U.S. Department of Justice auto parts antitrust investigation that has resulted in fines of more than $1.8 billion and guilty pleas from 23 companies and 25 executives.

Nippon Seiki has plants in Asia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Honda owns 6.1 percent of the company.

The settlement, filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit on Dec. 23 and dated Dec. 17, alleges that Nippon Seiki engaged in a conspiracy to raise, fix, maintain/and or stabilize prices and rig bids for its instrument panel clusters.

Nippon Seiki doesn't believe it's guilty of the charges, but is settling to "avoid further expense, inconvenience, and the distraction of burdensome and protracted litigation," the agreement says. Attempts to reach the company for further comment were not immediately successful.

"Given Nippon Seiki and its affiliates' promise of cooperation, this is an ice-breaker settlement that significantly increases pressure on the remaining instrument panel cluster parts defendants," said Hollis Salzman of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P., co-lead counsel for the end-payor plaintiffs, in a statement.

The Justice Department has cracked down on foreign suppliers for selling price-fixed components to the Detroit 3 automakers the U.S. subsidiaries of Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Toyota and Fuji Heavy Industries, parent company of Subaru.

In September, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said the conspiracies have inflated prices for parts included in more than 25 million vehicles sold to U.S. consumers.

Similar investigations have been under way by authorities in Europe and Asia.

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